Posthumus Conference 2026 (Amsterdam, 21-22 May)

Detailed Programme

<< to Thursday programme

Friday 22 May
10:00-10:30
Entrance hall
Arrival and registration
10:30-12:15
room tba
Session 3A – Wealth and income in the Low Countries
Organised by Research Network ‘Economy and Society of the Pre-industrial Low Countries in Comparative Perspective’
Daan Van den bussche (University of Antwerp), Nicolas Brenninkmeijer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and Wouter Ryckbosch (Ghent University) – Wealth and the geography of capital in Belgium, 1855–1937
peer commentator: Hans de Vries

Bas Spliet (Utrecht University) – Did craft guilds suppress wages? Evidence from the post-abolition Low Countries

Ellen Roelandts – Contesting wealth: The politics of wealth taxation in Belgium since 1880
peer commentator: Patrick Pieters

10:30-12:15
room tba
Session 3B – Daily life of enslaved and formerly enslaved individuals
Organised by Research Network ‘Routes and Roots in Colonial and Global History’
Pouwel van Schooten (Leiden University) –A garden of one’s own? Landownership of formerly enslaved people in 18th-century Galle and its hinterlands
peer commentator: Iliana Tintori Reyes

Marie Keulen (Radboud University) – Immersed in plantation society: Friction and daily life in Moravian teacher training schools for enslaved boys in colonial Suriname (1847-1863)st
peer commentator: Vincent Laarman

Dries Lyna (Radboud University) – Economies of trust? Rich lives of the urban poor in the Cape Colony
commentator: Zarah Cleve

10:30-12:15
room tba
Session 3C – Labour, industry, and inequality
Organised by Research Network ‘Globalisation, Inequality, and Sustainability in Long-Term Perspective’
Catherine Simpson (Utrecht University) – Air pollution, industry, mortality during the Dutch industrial revolution. Maastricht 1850-1950

Vigyan Ratnoo (Utrecht University) – Land, labour and globalization: Revisiting inequality in British India

Jutta Bolt (University of Groningen) – Africa@Work: Reconstructing a century of labour and livelihoods in Africa

12:15-13:15
Lunch room
Lunch break
13:15-15:00
room tba
Session 4A – Capitalism, mobility, and labour
Organised by Research Network ‘Inclusion, Exclusion, and Mobility’
Dominique Ankoné (VU Amsterdam) – The generation of 1939: Trần Đức Thảo and the Délégation Générale des Indochinois, 1936-1945
peer commentator: Sanâa May Swart

Yowali Kabamba (Utrecht University) – Navigating integration structures: The lived experiences of refugees on the labour market in Wallonia, Belgium
peer commentator: Hannelore Braeken

Kristof Loockx (University of Antwerp) – Kinship, mobility and expertise: Croatian dredgers in late nineteenth-century Antwerp

13:15-15:00
room tba
Session 4B – Social history of colonialism in Asia
Organised by Research Network ‘Routes and Roots in Colonial and Global History’
Sanayi Marcelline (Leiden University) – Between bondage and freedom: Manumission in the late 18th- and early 19th-century Colombo
peer commentator: Pascal Konings

Philipp Huber (International Institute of Social History) – A longue durée understanding of slaving in Macau
peer commentator: Wouter Raaijmakers

Sophie Rose (Leiden University) – Colonial madness: Mental deviance, normativity, and practices of care in the world of the Dutch East India Company
peer commentator: Paulo Pereira Oliveira Matos

15:00
Max Nettlau
Closing words and informal drinks